Today, October 18, is daughter Elizabeth's friend Timothy’s birthday. So birthday greetings go out to him.

For this week’s column I am going to do a daily diary of yesterday:

3:15 a.m. I get out of bed and pack Joe’s lunch and fill his water jug with ice and water while he gets ready for work.

3:55 a.m. Joe leaves for work. I go back to bed for about 45 minutes.

4:45 a.m. I get up again. Daughter Elizabeth, 18, is awake and getting her lunch packed for work. She eats a little something for breakfast.

5:15 a.m. – Elizabeth leaves for her job at the factory. I read until it is time to get the children up. It doesn’t work so well and I doze off.

6 a.m. I wake up and then wake the children up to get ready for school. They ask if I will make them coffee soup for their breakfast. This year the school serves free breakfast to all the students when they get there. I think the children are hungrier after they have been up awhile so some of them eat breakfast at school.

7 a.m. The bus comes and the children leave for school.

7:10 a.m. Loretta’s handicapped bus comes to pick her up, so I take her out to the bus. Steps are a little hard for her still with the heavy air casts on her feet. She takes her wheelchair to school in case she gets too tired walking through the day. We did get her fitting for her AFO braces, and those should be ready in two weeks.

8 a.m. After eating some breakfast, Susan and I fold the laundry that finished drying in the house overnight. We wash dishes and sweep the floors. Susan goes out to the do the morning chores and I add coal to the stove in the basement. Joe started the stove Saturday evening and it felt good to have heat the first couple of days. The temperatures have warmed up into the 60s, allowing us to open some windows.

12:45 p.m. After a light lunch of sandwiches, Susan and I head to the basement to start cleaning it. Things have accumulated down there again so we have a lot of sorting to do.

2:15 p.m. Loretta comes home with the handicapped bus. Joe is also home from work already.

3:30 p.m. The children are home from school and Elizabeth is home from the factory. We were glad to see son Benjamin getting off the bus again after not seeing him since Sunday evening. He went home Sunday with Elizabeth’s friend Timothy. He went to and from school from Timothy’s house for those three days. He was helping him with some small jobs around his place at night and also went bow hunting for deer. He was very excited about being able to stay there and sounds like he had an enjoyable time there. It seemed really empty around here with one missing, and I was glad to see him come home again.The rest pitched in to help us finish cleaning the basement, and we had quite some excitement. The girls and I were sorting some stuff on the floor when a mouse jumped out of a bag. We have never had a mouse in this new house so we were surprised. We all grabbed something close for protection, some had baseball bats, some had brooms, and some had the stove poker. The chase began but the mouse outsmarted us all and crawled out a small hole by the walk out doors. We were glad to see where it came in from and Joe filled the hole now. Now we hope that there are not any more down there but every body keeps on the look out. I imagine we all looked pretty funny running after the mouse.

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6:30 We had a quick supper of hamburger sandwiches.

8:30 Everyone is cleaned up and getting ready to call it a day.

Try this delicious cole slaw recipe!

STAY CRISP COLE SLAW

1 medium head of cabbage, shredded

2 carrots, shredded

1 green pepper, chopped

1 /4 cup onion, chopped

1 envelope unflavored gelatin

1 /4 cup cold water

2 /3 cup sugar

2 /3 cup vinegar

1 teaspoon celery seed

1 1 /2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

2 / 3 cup vegetable oil

Mix cabbage,carrots, peppers and onions. Sprinkle with half cup cold water. Cover and refrigerate to crisp, about 30 minutes. Soften gelatin in 1 /4 cup cold water. In saucepan combine sugar, vinegar, celery seed, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Stir in gelatin. Cool until dressing is slightly thickened. Beat the dressing well and gradually stir in vegetable oil. Drain vegetables and pour dressing over top until cabbage is well coated. Refrigerate until serving time. Toss before serving. Stays crisp for several days if refrigerated.